Google Just Gave You a Million New Reasons to Buy a Chromebook

Google has announced that Chrome OS will open up to Android app developers this June. Google hopes that within a couple months, apps will move to a stable beta release and finally work on Chromebooks this autumn.

This announcement makes good on earlier leaks first spotted by 9to5Google that Android would be pulling the Google Play Store, along with its one million apps, into Chrome OS. That’s huge, great, awesome news for lovers of Chromebooks (of which they are supposedly very many). Sundar Pichai talked about bringing Android to Chrome OS all the way back at Google I/O 2014. That promise resulted in a limited project, called App Runtime for Chrome and brought a dozen or so apps like Duolingo, Evernote, and Vine to Chrome OS

Now, you’re getting all of them, that is if developers build the apps for the platform. Android developers breakdown how these Android apps will behave when running on Chrome:

Android Apps can be shown in 3 different window sizes to allow the best experience

Users can multi-task with multiple Android apps in moveable windows along with a full desktop browser, all within the familiar Chrome OS interface.

Keyboard, mouse, and touch input will seamlessly work together

Users will get Android notifications on their Chromebooks

Android apps benefit from the Wi-Fi or Bluetooth connectivity setup by the user or the administrator

File sharing is seamless between Chrome and Android apps through the Files app

Performance of demanding apps such as games or design apps is excellent

Chromebooks have always been an excellent cheap computing option, but it lacked a robust app store to make it a true laptop competitor. This changes things, though. Some apps won’t be tethered to an internet connection like normal Chrome apps, making Chromebooks an online and offline machine. Of course, some apps that require smartphone-specific hardware, like GPS, might not work on a Chromebook at all. We’ll see.

Don’t get too excited quite yet. These apps still need to be optimised for the new platform and won’t be ready until some time in the autumn. The new feature will first appear on the Asus Chromebook Flip, Pixel 2 (2015), and Acer Chromebook R11 in June. But still, there are now a million new reasons why getting Chromebook makes more sense. [Google]